Failure: The Option Media I was once in an engineering team meeting, where the snippet from the movie Apollo 13 was played.  The scene demonstrated that famous saying, failure is not an option. I have heard this many times since then, not in business, but on other television shows and competitive events.  The thing is, […]

Risk Management from Front and Back Recently I spoke at a Metrolina PMI Chapter on Risk Management. If we have been managing projects, we know that risk management is significant to ensuring project success. Risk management starts from the very beginning of the project, the scope, and our strategy selection will all impact the risks […]

To Learn, or Not to Learn- There is Really No Question. I have spent time in a variety of roles in product development, from engineer to manager and process manager.  In the latter, as project and process manager, even in early 2000, there were organization processes and structures in place to encourage and record learning […]

The Organization Organizations, or most successful organizations, are not static.  To remain an ongoing concern the organization will need to adapt to identified opportunities.  This will require growing the talent base, either organically, that is from within, or by finding talent external to the organization.  From an external perspective, how do we know the right […]

  Career Change Recently we had a question come to us about how a person transition from one industry or a specific job title to another industry or another area of the company that requires different skills from what we presently have.  Perhaps as a way to avoid becoming stale, we may want to explore […]

More than one way There is not silver bullet or one way to do most things.  The best approach will depend upon the amount of time, talent, tools available, and potential risks associated with the work and level of risk aversion of those undertaking the effort.  The example below, is typical for developing embedded automotive […]

The Olden Days by Jon M Quigley I recently had a phone call with a person I met on LinkedIn. Actually, I have been having calls with them over the weeks, to talk about product development, especially the way it was in the olden days.  Over the course of few discussions we began chatting about […]